This book explores the impact of different civil-military structures on operational effectiveness in complex peace operations. Recent operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia are examples of grand failures to enforce peace and to promote democracy and development through international interventions. A missing variable in analyses of these conflicts hitherto has been the nature of the civil-military interface and its impact.

The principal argument of this book is that the civil-military interface should ideally be integrated within the interagency arena as well as within the...